I read
recently that the blockbuster film, Blair Witch Project
cost less than twenty million dollars to produce, and later,
after its release went on to gross an unbelievable sum. The
filmmaker singularly failed to mention the advertising budget for
the film was a little over eighty million dollars.

Ask any
member of the public to name the seminal decade of the twentieth
century and the reply you will almost inevitably receive will be
the sixties Thus far, now let us step back for a
moment. Most students of comedy would acknowledge the benchmarks
of modern humour were implanted in the nineteen fifties, the
Goons Round the Horne the Glums.
In the vanguard was, Barry Took, Muir and Norden, Marty Feldman,
and at the forefront, that flawed genius, Spike Milligan. We look
to the theatre, to writers, mould breakers like Samuel Beckett,
Lynne Reid Banks, Alan Sillitoe, Henry Livings, Alan Plater,
whose writing was unmistakably taken from and embedded in the
nineteen fifties. It was also in the nineteen fifties Maria
Callas introduced believable acting into opera, now Mimi really
was a waif dying of consumption in her garret instead of the
usual overweight soprano who woodenly followed the action with
both eyes fixed on the conductor.

However, with
popular music we seem to encounter a problem. The musicians of
the fifties seem unjustifiably to be condemned to dustbin of
anonymity. And observe what a rich treasure chest we ignore.

The
leviathans of the sixties, in the new millennium freshly knighted
and honoured, freely admit to their influences, to the blues men,
McKinley Morganfield, Sleepy John Estes, Big Bill Broonzy, to the
folk influences, Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, and to the early rock
and rollers yet overlook the real pioneers, musicians like
Ken Sykora, Ken Colyer, Cyril Davies, Bill Bramwell, the
colourful Alexis Korner, Cye Laurie, Beryl Bryden, Chris Barber,
Denny Wright, Ike Isaacs, Diz Disley I could go on,
musicians who discovered the blues men, who championed Lead Belly
and the rest. And brought them to this country. Characters who
shaped the decade and laid the foundations for that most over
rated of decades, the sixties.

Perhaps it is
simply because the sixties was the first media led decade, the
first decade to understand and embrace the true cult of the
celebrity, and then ruthlessly and angrily exploited it. The
decade that cynically expunged all references to the pioneers in
order to aggrandise their imperfect artists.

Recently I
asked a question on the Whirligig website, who remembers
Bill Bramwell? The silence was palpable; this session man
with a most complex personality, a guitarist who could swing
like a gate a man into psychoanalysis, an alcoholic, and a
giant of the decade, a colossus now all but forgotten.

Additionally
I mentioned Ken Sykora, influential host of Guitar Club
who was on a number of occasions voted the winner, musician
of the year by readers of the Melody Maker Ken
Sykora who is now a spectre, with not even an acknowledgement,
not even a footnote. Contrast Sir Paul, Sir Elton, Sir Mick feted
as iconoclasts, trailblazers.

Upon
investigation Maurice Levys Oriole records, home to many
British musicians, diary of the fifties, appears to have
inadvertently or deliberately erased its masters. The BBC
routinely wiped their masters; I understand that the Pye Nixa
catalogue was discovered abandoned in a shed.